With the passion and grace that mark her bestselling novels of women and faith, Mary Gordon contemplates one of history's earliest and most powerful female martyrs

Eternally fascinating, an enigma no less in our time than in her own, Joan of Arc has haunted Gordon's consciousness since childhood. Who was this girl who came from nowhere, supported an equivocal cause, triumphed for a scant few months, failed as a soldier, vacillated about her vision, died in agony, was refused canonization for five hundred years, yet, ponders Gordon, "stands alone in our imagination for the single-minded triumph of the she--and it must be a she--who feared nothing, knew herself right, and chosen of the Lord?"

Joan of Arcpenetrates the popular cultural icon to examine the vulnerability of a woman forced by her mission into the public world of men, from her first march at the head of the French soldiery at the age of seventeen to her capture by the British in 1430, from her vilification as a witch to the formidable legacy of her struggle. Only Gordon--a storyteller the San Francisco Chronicle calls "scintillating"--could breathe life into a figure so ethereal, so puzzling, so human.